FLORIDA LEGISLATURE
Regulations sought for foster kids prescribed psychiatric drugs
In the wake of a Broward child's death, state lawmakers will consider a bill designed to make it harder for child welfare workers to use mental health drugs to control foster kids.
BY CAROL MARBIN MILLER
CMARBIN@MIAMIHERALD.COM
Florida lawmakers will once again consider a measure to rein in the use of psychiatric drugs among foster children in the wake of last year's death of a 7-year-old Broward boy who was on a cocktail of mood-altering drugs.
A new bill, filed Friday by state Sen. Ronda Storms, a Brandon Republican, would, among other things, require that foster children assent to the use of psychiatric drugs. The proposed law would require caseworkers to explain to children, in a manner they can understand, why the drugs are necessary and what risks they carry.
``It's a huge step forward for the children of Florida,'' Robin Rosenberg, deputy director of Florida's Children First, said of the provision. ``It's integral to effective treatment for children to be involved at a developmentally appropriate level.''
The requirement that foster kids be involved in their own treatment was one of scores of recommendations made by a child welfare work group of administrators from the Department of Children & Families, doctors and children's advocates who studied the death of Gabriel Myers last April.
Gabriel, originally from Ohio, entered state care in June 2008 when his mother was found slumped in her car in a restaurant parking lot -- with a narcotic pill bottles surrounding her. Gabriel hanged himself on April 16, using a retractable shower cord as a noose.
In the aftermath, The Miami Herald reported that the boy had been prescribed several anti-psychotic and anti-depressant drugs in the months before his death. Most of the drugs have not been approved for use with children, and some have been linked to serious side effects, including an increased risk of suicide.
While Storm's bill tracks most of the work group's findings, it differs in some respects. One major difference: The work group wanted each child being administered psychotropic drugs to have the benefit of a lawyer at all court appearances.
Storms' bill requires the state to appoint guardians ad litem, or volunteer lay guardians. Storms said the guardians are qualified for the role because they already are involved in the children's lives.
Rosenberg, who was a member of the Gabriel Myers Work Group, said ``the work group concluded that attorneys are best suited to protect children's interests when prescribing medication,'' she said.
The bill would also:
• Prohibit children in state care from being involved in clinical trials designed to determine the safety or efficacy of drugs that have not yet been approved by the FDA.
• Require an independent medication review before psychiatric drugs can be administered to children 10 or younger.
• Require mental-health professionals to prepare an overall treatment plan, including the use of counseling and therapy, when children are prescribed psychiatric drugs.
``We want to give a preference to behavioral therapy,'' said Storms, the bill's sponsor. ``We're not going to just drug them through their childhood and adolescence.''
Storms said she thought the prescribing of such drugs has become a crutch for therapists, who are eschewing traditional couch chats with children. Research shows, she said, that some doctors are writing one prescription for a child every three minutes.
DCF administrators have supported the legislation, which marks the second time this decade that lawmakers have sought to crack down on mental-health drug use among kids in state care.
``With young kids, we really need to err on the side of caution,'' said DCF Secretary George Sheldon, who has supported both the work group and the legislation.
State Sen. Nan Rich, a Sunrise Democrat who is vice chair of the children's committee, said the bill will fail if lawmakers decline to set aside enough money to pay for it -- especially the provision that requires guardians for foster kids who are prescribed drugs.
Miami Herald staff writer Robert Samuels contributed to this report from Tallahassee.
http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/03/02/1507445/regulations-sought-for-foster.html?mi_pluck_action=comment_submitted&qwxq=1606957#Comments_Container
Isabella Brooke Knightly and Austin Gamez-Knightly
In Memory of my Loving Husband, William F. Knightly Jr. Murdered by ILLEGAL Palliative Care at a Nashua, NH Hospital
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Monday, March 1, 2010
Prison moms want more leeway in parental rights cases Bill sponsor hopeful Senate passage is near
Prison moms want more leeway in parental rights cases
Bill sponsor hopeful Senate passage is near
Note from unhappygrammy-This sounds like a good bill for NH seeing as parental rights are terminated every day due to the parents incarceration
By Faith Burkins-Gimzek
Assembly Corrections Committee Chairman Jeffrion Aubry emphasizes the importance of family as an incentive and support system for both parents who go to prison and their children. He is sponsoring a bill aimed at keeping families together when a member is incarcerated. Photo by Smita Bhooplapur, The Legislative Gazette.
March 01, 2010
The Senate seems poised to pass legislation this month that supporters say would help keep intact families separated by the criminal justice and child welfare systems.
Lawmakers, Office of Children and Family Services Commissioner Gladys Carrion and imprisoned women's rights advocates rallied outside the Senate Chamber Feb. 23 to support the Adoption and Safe Families Act Expanded Discretion Bill (S.2233-a/A.5462-a).
"I really am happy to be able to say to you that this legislation will definitely be passing in our house this session," said Sen. Velmanette Montgomery, chair of the Children and Families Committee and the bill's sponsor in the chamber.
"It will give families the fighting chance that they deserve to work towards rebuilding, to work towards keeping connections," said Tamar Kraft-Stolar, director of the Women in Prison Project for the Correctional Association of New York, which coordinated the Feb. 23 news conference. The Correctional Association has made passing this legislation one of its top priorities in its policy agenda for this year.
The Expanded Discretion bill would amend the Adoption and Safe Families Act, a federal law enacted in New York in 1999, which requires, with limited exceptions, foster care agencies to file a petition to terminate parental rights if a child has been in foster care for 15 of the previous 22 months.
Since a woman's median sentence in New York is 36 months, advocates of the bill say a majority of mothers are forced to give up their parental rights, often against the best interest of the child.
The bill has passed unanimously for two consecutive years in the Assembly and has now advanced to its third reading in the Senate.
It reached the Senate floor last session, but was never voted on because of the Senate coup last June.
The proposed legislation would increase a foster care agency's discretion in choosing whether to terminate parental rights and would give agencies the option of taking more time before filing termination of parental rights papers. The bill would also require courts to take into consideration the extenuating circumstances of a parent in the criminal justice system, making it easier for parents incarcerated or in residential substance abuse treatment to retain guardianship and custody of their children.
"[Current law] doesn't reflect the realities of the case and the time needed when the criminal justice system is involved," said Kraft-Stolar. She said there are, as the law stands, exceptions to the 15-month rule, but the exceptions are insufficient.
In the existing law's language, a foster care agency can delay filing termination papers if a child is placed with another family member, if the agency hadn't fulfilled its legal requirements to pursue reunification or if there is a "compelling reason" why it would not be in the best interest of the child to terminate parental rights. "There is some wiggle room … but not enough," Kraft-Stolar said.
According to the bill's justification, "In appropriate circumstances, caseworkers would have more time to work toward reunification or other permanent placements that do not involve severing family bonds forever." The bill memo also notes that this legislation would save the court system time and money by reducing the amount of costly termination hearings.
"What [the current law] does is it tips the balance inappropriately towards terminating parental rights in cases where a parent is in the criminal justice system, even when this outcome is not necessarily in the child's best interest and in the long-term interests of the family," Kraft-Stolar said.
Montgomery, D-Brooklyn, said many parents purposely avoid treatment because they are afraid of losing their children. "We want to make sure that parents can feel a sense of being … empowered as a parent, to be able to have a family when they come back. And that becomes an incentive, in fact, to be able to return as opposed to being a permanent prison person."
"[Incarcerated parent's] rights are terminated based on the fact that a parent's sentence is longer than the … law allows for them to be able to maintain their parental rights. Those children then get taken away, and the results of that are, in too many cases, those children also become part of the criminal justice system. We want to break that cycle," she said.
Assembly Corrections Committee Chairman Jeffrion Aubry, D-Queens, sponsor of the Assembly bill, emphasized the importance of family as an incentive and support system for those returning from prison or residential substance abuse treatment, and believes this bill will decrease re-internment. "We recognize that children are the unseen victims in this system," he said. "It works on both sides — it's good for the children, it's good for the parents."
Sen. Diane Savino, D-Staten Island, a co-sponsor of the bill, spoke from personal experience as a social worker with the state Child Welfare Association.
"There was something I had then that caseworkers today don't have," she said. "That was the discretion to make decisions based upon what I knew about the mother of that child, the relationship with that child, the level of planning and whether or not reunification would be successful. Caseworkers today don't have that discretion."
Mothers who had lost their children while incarcerated also spoke at the news conference, providing personal testimony as to the necessity of this legislation. The mothers spoke about the difficulties they faced maintaining contact with their children, and some reported child abuse occurring in foster care homes.
Brunilda Rivera, a Brooklyn mom who was imprisoned for 18 months, said her son was deprived of food and repeatedly locked in a room while in foster care. "Most kids want to be with their moms," she said. "It was a bad situation at home, but they put him in a worse situation.
"Even though it's an everyday struggle for us to get our lives together, to get clean and sober and to be a positive role model, we need a chance," she continued. "We definitely need a chance. We need someone to say, 'here, we're going to give you the hand you need and the proper steps to take so that you can be a better person and to be a better parent.'"
Her son, 13-year-old Brandon Rivera, said, "I'm glad that my mom is by my side right now helping other children get their moms back through passing this bill."
http://www.legislativegazette.com/Articles-c-2010-03-01-65767.113122_Prison_moms_want_more_leeway_in_parental_rights_cases.html
Bill sponsor hopeful Senate passage is near
Note from unhappygrammy-This sounds like a good bill for NH seeing as parental rights are terminated every day due to the parents incarceration
By Faith Burkins-Gimzek
Assembly Corrections Committee Chairman Jeffrion Aubry emphasizes the importance of family as an incentive and support system for both parents who go to prison and their children. He is sponsoring a bill aimed at keeping families together when a member is incarcerated. Photo by Smita Bhooplapur, The Legislative Gazette.
March 01, 2010
The Senate seems poised to pass legislation this month that supporters say would help keep intact families separated by the criminal justice and child welfare systems.
Lawmakers, Office of Children and Family Services Commissioner Gladys Carrion and imprisoned women's rights advocates rallied outside the Senate Chamber Feb. 23 to support the Adoption and Safe Families Act Expanded Discretion Bill (S.2233-a/A.5462-a).
"I really am happy to be able to say to you that this legislation will definitely be passing in our house this session," said Sen. Velmanette Montgomery, chair of the Children and Families Committee and the bill's sponsor in the chamber.
"It will give families the fighting chance that they deserve to work towards rebuilding, to work towards keeping connections," said Tamar Kraft-Stolar, director of the Women in Prison Project for the Correctional Association of New York, which coordinated the Feb. 23 news conference. The Correctional Association has made passing this legislation one of its top priorities in its policy agenda for this year.
The Expanded Discretion bill would amend the Adoption and Safe Families Act, a federal law enacted in New York in 1999, which requires, with limited exceptions, foster care agencies to file a petition to terminate parental rights if a child has been in foster care for 15 of the previous 22 months.
Since a woman's median sentence in New York is 36 months, advocates of the bill say a majority of mothers are forced to give up their parental rights, often against the best interest of the child.
The bill has passed unanimously for two consecutive years in the Assembly and has now advanced to its third reading in the Senate.
It reached the Senate floor last session, but was never voted on because of the Senate coup last June.
The proposed legislation would increase a foster care agency's discretion in choosing whether to terminate parental rights and would give agencies the option of taking more time before filing termination of parental rights papers. The bill would also require courts to take into consideration the extenuating circumstances of a parent in the criminal justice system, making it easier for parents incarcerated or in residential substance abuse treatment to retain guardianship and custody of their children.
"[Current law] doesn't reflect the realities of the case and the time needed when the criminal justice system is involved," said Kraft-Stolar. She said there are, as the law stands, exceptions to the 15-month rule, but the exceptions are insufficient.
In the existing law's language, a foster care agency can delay filing termination papers if a child is placed with another family member, if the agency hadn't fulfilled its legal requirements to pursue reunification or if there is a "compelling reason" why it would not be in the best interest of the child to terminate parental rights. "There is some wiggle room … but not enough," Kraft-Stolar said.
According to the bill's justification, "In appropriate circumstances, caseworkers would have more time to work toward reunification or other permanent placements that do not involve severing family bonds forever." The bill memo also notes that this legislation would save the court system time and money by reducing the amount of costly termination hearings.
"What [the current law] does is it tips the balance inappropriately towards terminating parental rights in cases where a parent is in the criminal justice system, even when this outcome is not necessarily in the child's best interest and in the long-term interests of the family," Kraft-Stolar said.
Montgomery, D-Brooklyn, said many parents purposely avoid treatment because they are afraid of losing their children. "We want to make sure that parents can feel a sense of being … empowered as a parent, to be able to have a family when they come back. And that becomes an incentive, in fact, to be able to return as opposed to being a permanent prison person."
"[Incarcerated parent's] rights are terminated based on the fact that a parent's sentence is longer than the … law allows for them to be able to maintain their parental rights. Those children then get taken away, and the results of that are, in too many cases, those children also become part of the criminal justice system. We want to break that cycle," she said.
Assembly Corrections Committee Chairman Jeffrion Aubry, D-Queens, sponsor of the Assembly bill, emphasized the importance of family as an incentive and support system for those returning from prison or residential substance abuse treatment, and believes this bill will decrease re-internment. "We recognize that children are the unseen victims in this system," he said. "It works on both sides — it's good for the children, it's good for the parents."
Sen. Diane Savino, D-Staten Island, a co-sponsor of the bill, spoke from personal experience as a social worker with the state Child Welfare Association.
"There was something I had then that caseworkers today don't have," she said. "That was the discretion to make decisions based upon what I knew about the mother of that child, the relationship with that child, the level of planning and whether or not reunification would be successful. Caseworkers today don't have that discretion."
Mothers who had lost their children while incarcerated also spoke at the news conference, providing personal testimony as to the necessity of this legislation. The mothers spoke about the difficulties they faced maintaining contact with their children, and some reported child abuse occurring in foster care homes.
Brunilda Rivera, a Brooklyn mom who was imprisoned for 18 months, said her son was deprived of food and repeatedly locked in a room while in foster care. "Most kids want to be with their moms," she said. "It was a bad situation at home, but they put him in a worse situation.
"Even though it's an everyday struggle for us to get our lives together, to get clean and sober and to be a positive role model, we need a chance," she continued. "We definitely need a chance. We need someone to say, 'here, we're going to give you the hand you need and the proper steps to take so that you can be a better person and to be a better parent.'"
Her son, 13-year-old Brandon Rivera, said, "I'm glad that my mom is by my side right now helping other children get their moms back through passing this bill."
http://www.legislativegazette.com/Articles-c-2010-03-01-65767.113122_Prison_moms_want_more_leeway_in_parental_rights_cases.html
As You Slide Down the Banister of Life in 2010- Remember
Sent to me from my good friend Bobbi
As You Slide Down the Banister of Life in 2010- Remember
1. Transvestite: A guy who likes to eat, drink
And be Mary..
2. The difference between the Pope and Your boss,
the Pope only expects you to kiss his ring.
3. My mind works like lightning, one brilliant flash and it is gone.
4. The only time the world beats a path to your door is if you're in
the bathroom.
5. It used to be only death and taxes. Now, of course, there's
shipping and handling, too.
6. A husband is someone who, after taking the trash out, gives the
impression that he just cleaned the whole house.
7. My next house will have no kitchen - just vending machines and a
Large trash can.
8. As you slide down the banister of life, may the splinters never
Point the wrong way...
9. Be who you are and say what you feel!
Because those that matter, don't mind!
And those that mind, don't matter!
As You Slide Down the Banister of Life in 2010- Remember
1. Transvestite: A guy who likes to eat, drink
And be Mary..
2. The difference between the Pope and Your boss,
the Pope only expects you to kiss his ring.
3. My mind works like lightning, one brilliant flash and it is gone.
4. The only time the world beats a path to your door is if you're in
the bathroom.
5. It used to be only death and taxes. Now, of course, there's
shipping and handling, too.
6. A husband is someone who, after taking the trash out, gives the
impression that he just cleaned the whole house.
7. My next house will have no kitchen - just vending machines and a
Large trash can.
8. As you slide down the banister of life, may the splinters never
Point the wrong way...
9. Be who you are and say what you feel!
Because those that matter, don't mind!
And those that mind, don't matter!
Handbook suggests that deviations from 'normality' are disorders
Handbook suggests that deviations from 'normality' are disorders
By George F. Will
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Peter De Vries, America's wittiest novelist, died 17 years ago, but his discernment of this country's cultural foibles still amazes. In a 1983 novel, he spotted the tendency of America's therapeutic culture to medicalize character flaws:
"Once terms like identity doubts and midlife crisis become current," De Vries wrote, "the reported cases of them increase by leaps and bounds." And: "Rapid-fire means of communication have brought psychic dilapidation within the reach of the most provincial backwaters, so that large metropolitan centers and educated circles need no longer consider it their exclusive property, nor preen themselves on their special malaises."
Life is about to imitate De Vries's literature, again. The fourth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), psychiatry's encyclopedia of supposed mental "disorders," is being revised. The 16 years since the last revision evidently were prolific in producing new afflictions. The revision may aggravate the confusion of moral categories.
Today's DSM defines "oppositional defiant disorder" as a pattern of "negativistic, defiant, disobedient and hostile behavior toward authority figures." Symptoms include "often loses temper," "often deliberately annoys people" or "is often touchy." DSM omits this symptom: "is a teenager."
This DSM defines as "personality disorders" attributes that once were considered character flaws. "Antisocial personality disorder" is "a pervasive pattern of disregard for . . . the rights of others . . . callous, cynical . . . an inflated and arrogant self-appraisal." "Histrionic personality disorder" is "excessive emotionality and attention-seeking." "Narcissistic personality disorder" involves "grandiosity, need for admiration . . . boastful and pretentious." And so on.
If every character blemish or emotional turbulence is a "disorder" akin to a physical disability, legal accommodations are mandatory. Under federal law, "disabilities" include any "mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities"; "mental impairments" include "emotional or mental illness." So there might be a legal entitlement to be a jerk. (See above, "antisocial personality disorder.")
The revised DSM reportedly may include "binge eating disorder" and "hypersexual disorder" ("a great deal of time" devoted to "sexual fantasies and urges" and "planning for and engaging in sexual behavior"). Concerning children, there might be "temper dysregulation disorder with dysphoria."
This last categorization illustrates the serious stakes in the categorization of behaviors. Extremely irritable or aggressive children are frequently diagnosed as bipolar and treated with powerful antipsychotic drugs. This can be a damaging mistake if behavioral modification treatment can mitigate the problem.
Another danger is that childhood eccentricities, sometimes inextricable from creativity, might be labeled "disorders" to be "cured." If 7-year-old Mozart tried composing his concertos today, he might be diagnosed with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and medicated into barren normality.
Furthermore, intellectual chaos can result from medicalizing the assessment of character. Today's therapeutic ethos, which celebrates curing and disparages judging, expresses the liberal disposition to assume that crime and other problematic behaviors reflect social or biological causation. While this absolves the individual of responsibility, it also strips the individual of personhood and moral dignity.
James Q. Wilson, America's preeminent social scientist, has noted how "abuse excuse" threatens the legal system and society's moral equilibrium. Writing in National Affairs quarterly ("The Future of Blame"), Wilson notes that genetics and neuroscience seem to suggest that self-control is more attenuated -- perhaps to the vanishing point -- than our legal and ethical traditions assume.
The part of the brain that stimulates anger and aggression is larger in men than in women, and the part that restrains anger is smaller in men than in women. "Men," Wilson writes, "by no choice of their own, are far more prone to violence and far less capable of self-restraint than women." That does not, however, absolve violent men of blame. As Wilson says, biology and environment interact. And the social environment includes moral assumptions, sometimes codified in law, concerning expectations about our duty to desire what we ought to desire.
It is scientifically sensible to say that all behavior is in some sense caused. But a society that thinks scientific determinism renders personal responsibility a chimera must consider it absurd not only to condemn depravity but also to praise nobility. Such moral derangement can flow from exaggerated notions of what science teaches, or can teach, about the biological and environmental roots of behavior.
Or -- revisers of the DSM, please note -- confusion can flow from the notion that normality is always obvious and normative, meaning preferable. And the notion that deviations from it should be considered "disorders" to be "cured" rather than stigmatized as offenses against valid moral norms.
georgewill@washpost.com
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/26/AR2010022603369.html?hpid=opinionsbox1
By George F. Will
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Peter De Vries, America's wittiest novelist, died 17 years ago, but his discernment of this country's cultural foibles still amazes. In a 1983 novel, he spotted the tendency of America's therapeutic culture to medicalize character flaws:
"Once terms like identity doubts and midlife crisis become current," De Vries wrote, "the reported cases of them increase by leaps and bounds." And: "Rapid-fire means of communication have brought psychic dilapidation within the reach of the most provincial backwaters, so that large metropolitan centers and educated circles need no longer consider it their exclusive property, nor preen themselves on their special malaises."
Life is about to imitate De Vries's literature, again. The fourth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), psychiatry's encyclopedia of supposed mental "disorders," is being revised. The 16 years since the last revision evidently were prolific in producing new afflictions. The revision may aggravate the confusion of moral categories.
Today's DSM defines "oppositional defiant disorder" as a pattern of "negativistic, defiant, disobedient and hostile behavior toward authority figures." Symptoms include "often loses temper," "often deliberately annoys people" or "is often touchy." DSM omits this symptom: "is a teenager."
This DSM defines as "personality disorders" attributes that once were considered character flaws. "Antisocial personality disorder" is "a pervasive pattern of disregard for . . . the rights of others . . . callous, cynical . . . an inflated and arrogant self-appraisal." "Histrionic personality disorder" is "excessive emotionality and attention-seeking." "Narcissistic personality disorder" involves "grandiosity, need for admiration . . . boastful and pretentious." And so on.
If every character blemish or emotional turbulence is a "disorder" akin to a physical disability, legal accommodations are mandatory. Under federal law, "disabilities" include any "mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities"; "mental impairments" include "emotional or mental illness." So there might be a legal entitlement to be a jerk. (See above, "antisocial personality disorder.")
The revised DSM reportedly may include "binge eating disorder" and "hypersexual disorder" ("a great deal of time" devoted to "sexual fantasies and urges" and "planning for and engaging in sexual behavior"). Concerning children, there might be "temper dysregulation disorder with dysphoria."
This last categorization illustrates the serious stakes in the categorization of behaviors. Extremely irritable or aggressive children are frequently diagnosed as bipolar and treated with powerful antipsychotic drugs. This can be a damaging mistake if behavioral modification treatment can mitigate the problem.
Another danger is that childhood eccentricities, sometimes inextricable from creativity, might be labeled "disorders" to be "cured." If 7-year-old Mozart tried composing his concertos today, he might be diagnosed with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and medicated into barren normality.
Furthermore, intellectual chaos can result from medicalizing the assessment of character. Today's therapeutic ethos, which celebrates curing and disparages judging, expresses the liberal disposition to assume that crime and other problematic behaviors reflect social or biological causation. While this absolves the individual of responsibility, it also strips the individual of personhood and moral dignity.
James Q. Wilson, America's preeminent social scientist, has noted how "abuse excuse" threatens the legal system and society's moral equilibrium. Writing in National Affairs quarterly ("The Future of Blame"), Wilson notes that genetics and neuroscience seem to suggest that self-control is more attenuated -- perhaps to the vanishing point -- than our legal and ethical traditions assume.
The part of the brain that stimulates anger and aggression is larger in men than in women, and the part that restrains anger is smaller in men than in women. "Men," Wilson writes, "by no choice of their own, are far more prone to violence and far less capable of self-restraint than women." That does not, however, absolve violent men of blame. As Wilson says, biology and environment interact. And the social environment includes moral assumptions, sometimes codified in law, concerning expectations about our duty to desire what we ought to desire.
It is scientifically sensible to say that all behavior is in some sense caused. But a society that thinks scientific determinism renders personal responsibility a chimera must consider it absurd not only to condemn depravity but also to praise nobility. Such moral derangement can flow from exaggerated notions of what science teaches, or can teach, about the biological and environmental roots of behavior.
Or -- revisers of the DSM, please note -- confusion can flow from the notion that normality is always obvious and normative, meaning preferable. And the notion that deviations from it should be considered "disorders" to be "cured" rather than stigmatized as offenses against valid moral norms.
georgewill@washpost.com
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/26/AR2010022603369.html?hpid=opinionsbox1
Researchers Fail to Reveal Full Drug Pay
Researchers Fail to Reveal Full Drug Pay
By GARDINER HARRIS and BENEDICT CAREY
Published: June 8, 2008
A world-renowned Harvard child psychiatrist whose work has helped fuel an explosion in the use of powerful antipsychotic medicines in children earned at least $1.6 million in consulting fees from drug makers from 2000 to 2007 but for years did not report much of this income to university officials, according to information given Congressional investigators.
J. Scott Applewhite/Associated Press
Senator Charles E. Grassley pushed three experts in child psychiatry at Harvard to expose their income from consulting fees.
Multimedia
Graphic
A Doctor’s Underreported Transactions
Dr. Joseph Biederman belatedly reported at least $1.6 million in consulting fees.
By failing to report income, the psychiatrist, Dr. Joseph Biederman, and a colleague in the psychiatry department at Harvard Medical School, Dr. Timothy E. Wilens, may have violated federal and university research rules designed to police potential conflicts of interest, according to Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa. Some of their research is financed by government grants.
Like Dr. Biederman, Dr. Wilens belatedly reported earning at least $1.6 million from 2000 to 2007, and another Harvard colleague, Dr. Thomas Spencer, reported earning at least $1 million after being pressed by Mr. Grassley’s investigators. But even these amended disclosures may understate the researchers’ outside income because some entries contradict payment information from drug makers, Mr. Grassley found.
In one example, Dr. Biederman reported no income from Johnson & Johnson for 2001 in a disclosure report filed with the university. When asked to check again, he said he received $3,500. But Johnson & Johnson told Mr. Grassley that it paid him $58,169 in 2001, Mr. Grassley found.
The Harvard group’s consulting arrangements with drug makers were already controversial because of the researchers’ advocacy of unapproved uses of psychiatric medicines in children.
In an e-mailed statement, Dr. Biederman said, “My interests are solely in the advancement of medical treatment through rigorous and objective study,” and he said he took conflict-of-interest policies “very seriously.” Drs. Wilens and Spencer said in e-mailed statements that they thought they had complied with conflict-of-interest rules.
John Burklow, a spokesman for the National Institutes of Health, said: “If there have been violations of N.I.H. policy — and if research integrity has been compromised — we will take all the appropriate action within our power to hold those responsible accountable. This would be completely unacceptable behavior, and N.I.H. will not tolerate it.”
The federal grants received by Drs. Biederman and Wilens were administered by Massachusetts General Hospital, which in 2005 won $287 million in such grants. The health institutes could place restrictions on the hospital’s grants or even suspend them altogether.
Alyssa Kneller, a Harvard spokeswoman, said in an e-mailed statement: “The information released by Senator Grassley suggests that, in certain instances, each doctor may have failed to disclose outside income from pharmaceutical companies and other entities that should have been disclosed.”
Ms. Kneller said the doctors had been referred to a university conflict committee for review.
Mr. Grassley sent letters on Wednesday to Harvard and the health institutes outlining his investigators’ findings, and he placed the letters along with his comments in The Congressional Record.
Dr. Biederman is one of the most influential researchers in child psychiatry and is widely admired for focusing the field’s attention on its most troubled young patients. Although many of his studies are small and often financed by drug makers, his work helped to fuel a controversial 40-fold increase from 1994 to 2003 in the diagnosis of pediatric bipolar disorder, which is characterized by severe mood swings, and a rapid rise in the use of antipsychotic medicines in children. The Grassley investigation did not address research quality.
Doctors have known for years that antipsychotic drugs, sometimes called major tranquilizers, can quickly subdue children. But youngsters appear to be especially susceptible to the weight gain and metabolic problems caused by the drugs, and it is far from clear that the medications improve children’s lives over time, experts say.
In the last 25 years, drug and device makers have displaced the federal government as the primary source of research financing, and industry support is vital to many university research programs. But as corporate research executives recruit the brightest scientists, their brethren in marketing departments have discovered that some of these same scientists can be terrific pitchmen.
To protect research integrity, the National Institutes of Health require researchers to report to universities earnings of $10,000 or more per year, for instance, in consulting money from makers of drugs also studied by the researchers in federally financed trials. Universities manage financial conflicts by requiring that the money be disclosed to research subjects, among other measures.
The health institutes last year awarded more than $23 billion in grants to more than 325,000 researchers at over 3,000 universities, and auditing the potential conflicts of each grantee would be impossible, health institutes officials have long insisted. So the government relies on universities.
Multimedia
Graphic
A Doctor’s Underreported Transactions
Universities ask professors to report their conflicts but do almost nothing to verify the accuracy of these voluntary disclosures.
“It’s really been an honor system thing,” said Dr. Robert Alpern, dean of Yale School of Medicine. “If somebody tells us that a pharmaceutical company pays them $80,000 a year, I don’t even know how to check on that.”
Some states have laws requiring drug makers to disclose payments made to doctors, and Mr. Grassley and others have sponsored legislation to create a national registry.
Lawmakers have been concerned in recent years about the use of unapproved medications in children and the influence of industry money.
Mr. Grassley asked Harvard for the three researchers’ financial disclosure reports from 2000 through 2007 and asked some drug makers to list payments made to them.
“Basically, these forms were a mess,” Mr. Grassley said in comments he entered into The Congressional Record on Wednesday. “Over the last seven years, it looked like they had taken a couple hundred thousand dollars.”
Prompted by Mr. Grassley’s interest, Harvard asked the researchers to re-examine their disclosure reports.
In the new disclosures, the trio’s outside consulting income jumped but was still contradicted by reports sent to Mr. Grassley from some of the companies. In some cases, the income seems to have put the researchers in violation of university and federal rules.
In 2000, for instance, Dr. Biederman received a grant from the National Institutes of Health to study in children Strattera, an Eli Lilly drug for attention deficit disorder. Dr. Biederman reported to Harvard that he received less than $10,000 from Lilly that year, but the company told Mr. Grassley that it paid Dr. Biederman more than $14,000 in 2000, Mr. Grassley’s letter stated.
At the time, Harvard forbade professors from conducting clinical trials if they received payments over $10,000 from the company whose product was being studied, and federal rules required such conflicts to be managed.
Mr. Grassley said these discrepancies demonstrated profound flaws in the oversight of researchers’ financial conflicts and the need for a national registry. But the disclosures may also cloud the work of one of the most prominent group of child psychiatrists in the world.
In the past decade, Dr. Biederman and his colleagues have promoted the aggressive diagnosis and drug treatment of childhood bipolar disorder, a mood problem once thought confined to adults. They have maintained that the disorder was underdiagnosed in children and could be treated with antipsychotic drugs, medications invented to treat schizophrenia.
Other researchers have made similar assertions. As a result, pediatric bipolar diagnoses and antipsychotic drug use in children have soared. Some 500,000 children and teenagers were given at least one prescription for an antipsychotic in 2007, including 20,500 under 6 years of age, according to Medco Health Solutions, a pharmacy benefit manager.
Few psychiatrists today doubt that bipolar disorder can strike in the early teenage years, or that many of the children being given the diagnosis are deeply distressed.
“I consider Dr. Biederman a true visionary in recognizing this illness in children,” said Susan Resko, director of the Child and Adolescent Bipolar Foundation, “and he’s not only saved many lives but restored hope to thousands of families across the country.”
Longtime critics of the group see its influence differently. “They have given the Harvard imprimatur to this commercial experimentation on children,” said Vera Sharav, president and founder of the Alliance for Human Research Protection, a patient advocacy group.
Many researchers strongly disagree over what bipolar looks like in youngsters, and some now fear the definition has been expanded unnecessarily, due in part to the Harvard group.
The group published the results of a string of drug trials from 2001 to 2006, but the studies were so small and loosely designed that they were largely inconclusive, experts say. In some studies testing antipsychotic drugs, the group defined improvement as a decline of 30 percent or more on a scale called the Young Mania Rating Scale — well below the 50 percent change that most researchers now use as the standard.
Controlling for bias is especially important in such work, given that the scale is subjective, and raters often depend on reports from parents and children, several top psychiatrists said.
More broadly, they said, revelations of undisclosed payments from drug makers to leading researchers are especially damaging for psychiatry.
“The price we pay for these kinds of revelations is credibility, and we just can’t afford to lose any more of that in this field,” said Dr. E. Fuller Torrey, executive director of the Stanley Medical Research Institute, which finances psychiatric studies. “In the area of child psychiatry in particular, we know much less than we should, and we desperately need research that is not influenced by industry money.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/08/us/08conflict.html?_r=2
By GARDINER HARRIS and BENEDICT CAREY
Published: June 8, 2008
A world-renowned Harvard child psychiatrist whose work has helped fuel an explosion in the use of powerful antipsychotic medicines in children earned at least $1.6 million in consulting fees from drug makers from 2000 to 2007 but for years did not report much of this income to university officials, according to information given Congressional investigators.
J. Scott Applewhite/Associated Press
Senator Charles E. Grassley pushed three experts in child psychiatry at Harvard to expose their income from consulting fees.
Multimedia
Graphic
A Doctor’s Underreported Transactions
Dr. Joseph Biederman belatedly reported at least $1.6 million in consulting fees.
By failing to report income, the psychiatrist, Dr. Joseph Biederman, and a colleague in the psychiatry department at Harvard Medical School, Dr. Timothy E. Wilens, may have violated federal and university research rules designed to police potential conflicts of interest, according to Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa. Some of their research is financed by government grants.
Like Dr. Biederman, Dr. Wilens belatedly reported earning at least $1.6 million from 2000 to 2007, and another Harvard colleague, Dr. Thomas Spencer, reported earning at least $1 million after being pressed by Mr. Grassley’s investigators. But even these amended disclosures may understate the researchers’ outside income because some entries contradict payment information from drug makers, Mr. Grassley found.
In one example, Dr. Biederman reported no income from Johnson & Johnson for 2001 in a disclosure report filed with the university. When asked to check again, he said he received $3,500. But Johnson & Johnson told Mr. Grassley that it paid him $58,169 in 2001, Mr. Grassley found.
The Harvard group’s consulting arrangements with drug makers were already controversial because of the researchers’ advocacy of unapproved uses of psychiatric medicines in children.
In an e-mailed statement, Dr. Biederman said, “My interests are solely in the advancement of medical treatment through rigorous and objective study,” and he said he took conflict-of-interest policies “very seriously.” Drs. Wilens and Spencer said in e-mailed statements that they thought they had complied with conflict-of-interest rules.
John Burklow, a spokesman for the National Institutes of Health, said: “If there have been violations of N.I.H. policy — and if research integrity has been compromised — we will take all the appropriate action within our power to hold those responsible accountable. This would be completely unacceptable behavior, and N.I.H. will not tolerate it.”
The federal grants received by Drs. Biederman and Wilens were administered by Massachusetts General Hospital, which in 2005 won $287 million in such grants. The health institutes could place restrictions on the hospital’s grants or even suspend them altogether.
Alyssa Kneller, a Harvard spokeswoman, said in an e-mailed statement: “The information released by Senator Grassley suggests that, in certain instances, each doctor may have failed to disclose outside income from pharmaceutical companies and other entities that should have been disclosed.”
Ms. Kneller said the doctors had been referred to a university conflict committee for review.
Mr. Grassley sent letters on Wednesday to Harvard and the health institutes outlining his investigators’ findings, and he placed the letters along with his comments in The Congressional Record.
Dr. Biederman is one of the most influential researchers in child psychiatry and is widely admired for focusing the field’s attention on its most troubled young patients. Although many of his studies are small and often financed by drug makers, his work helped to fuel a controversial 40-fold increase from 1994 to 2003 in the diagnosis of pediatric bipolar disorder, which is characterized by severe mood swings, and a rapid rise in the use of antipsychotic medicines in children. The Grassley investigation did not address research quality.
Doctors have known for years that antipsychotic drugs, sometimes called major tranquilizers, can quickly subdue children. But youngsters appear to be especially susceptible to the weight gain and metabolic problems caused by the drugs, and it is far from clear that the medications improve children’s lives over time, experts say.
In the last 25 years, drug and device makers have displaced the federal government as the primary source of research financing, and industry support is vital to many university research programs. But as corporate research executives recruit the brightest scientists, their brethren in marketing departments have discovered that some of these same scientists can be terrific pitchmen.
To protect research integrity, the National Institutes of Health require researchers to report to universities earnings of $10,000 or more per year, for instance, in consulting money from makers of drugs also studied by the researchers in federally financed trials. Universities manage financial conflicts by requiring that the money be disclosed to research subjects, among other measures.
The health institutes last year awarded more than $23 billion in grants to more than 325,000 researchers at over 3,000 universities, and auditing the potential conflicts of each grantee would be impossible, health institutes officials have long insisted. So the government relies on universities.
Multimedia
Graphic
A Doctor’s Underreported Transactions
Universities ask professors to report their conflicts but do almost nothing to verify the accuracy of these voluntary disclosures.
“It’s really been an honor system thing,” said Dr. Robert Alpern, dean of Yale School of Medicine. “If somebody tells us that a pharmaceutical company pays them $80,000 a year, I don’t even know how to check on that.”
Some states have laws requiring drug makers to disclose payments made to doctors, and Mr. Grassley and others have sponsored legislation to create a national registry.
Lawmakers have been concerned in recent years about the use of unapproved medications in children and the influence of industry money.
Mr. Grassley asked Harvard for the three researchers’ financial disclosure reports from 2000 through 2007 and asked some drug makers to list payments made to them.
“Basically, these forms were a mess,” Mr. Grassley said in comments he entered into The Congressional Record on Wednesday. “Over the last seven years, it looked like they had taken a couple hundred thousand dollars.”
Prompted by Mr. Grassley’s interest, Harvard asked the researchers to re-examine their disclosure reports.
In the new disclosures, the trio’s outside consulting income jumped but was still contradicted by reports sent to Mr. Grassley from some of the companies. In some cases, the income seems to have put the researchers in violation of university and federal rules.
In 2000, for instance, Dr. Biederman received a grant from the National Institutes of Health to study in children Strattera, an Eli Lilly drug for attention deficit disorder. Dr. Biederman reported to Harvard that he received less than $10,000 from Lilly that year, but the company told Mr. Grassley that it paid Dr. Biederman more than $14,000 in 2000, Mr. Grassley’s letter stated.
At the time, Harvard forbade professors from conducting clinical trials if they received payments over $10,000 from the company whose product was being studied, and federal rules required such conflicts to be managed.
Mr. Grassley said these discrepancies demonstrated profound flaws in the oversight of researchers’ financial conflicts and the need for a national registry. But the disclosures may also cloud the work of one of the most prominent group of child psychiatrists in the world.
In the past decade, Dr. Biederman and his colleagues have promoted the aggressive diagnosis and drug treatment of childhood bipolar disorder, a mood problem once thought confined to adults. They have maintained that the disorder was underdiagnosed in children and could be treated with antipsychotic drugs, medications invented to treat schizophrenia.
Other researchers have made similar assertions. As a result, pediatric bipolar diagnoses and antipsychotic drug use in children have soared. Some 500,000 children and teenagers were given at least one prescription for an antipsychotic in 2007, including 20,500 under 6 years of age, according to Medco Health Solutions, a pharmacy benefit manager.
Few psychiatrists today doubt that bipolar disorder can strike in the early teenage years, or that many of the children being given the diagnosis are deeply distressed.
“I consider Dr. Biederman a true visionary in recognizing this illness in children,” said Susan Resko, director of the Child and Adolescent Bipolar Foundation, “and he’s not only saved many lives but restored hope to thousands of families across the country.”
Longtime critics of the group see its influence differently. “They have given the Harvard imprimatur to this commercial experimentation on children,” said Vera Sharav, president and founder of the Alliance for Human Research Protection, a patient advocacy group.
Many researchers strongly disagree over what bipolar looks like in youngsters, and some now fear the definition has been expanded unnecessarily, due in part to the Harvard group.
The group published the results of a string of drug trials from 2001 to 2006, but the studies were so small and loosely designed that they were largely inconclusive, experts say. In some studies testing antipsychotic drugs, the group defined improvement as a decline of 30 percent or more on a scale called the Young Mania Rating Scale — well below the 50 percent change that most researchers now use as the standard.
Controlling for bias is especially important in such work, given that the scale is subjective, and raters often depend on reports from parents and children, several top psychiatrists said.
More broadly, they said, revelations of undisclosed payments from drug makers to leading researchers are especially damaging for psychiatry.
“The price we pay for these kinds of revelations is credibility, and we just can’t afford to lose any more of that in this field,” said Dr. E. Fuller Torrey, executive director of the Stanley Medical Research Institute, which finances psychiatric studies. “In the area of child psychiatry in particular, we know much less than we should, and we desperately need research that is not influenced by industry money.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/08/us/08conflict.html?_r=2
Program Gives Parents Hope For A Second Chance To Raise Children
Special Report: Program Gives Parents Hope For A Second Chance To Raise Children
By Kim Genardo, NBC17, 4 days, 6 hours ago
Updated: Feb. 26 7:34 am
http://mync.com/site/48409/ WAKE COUNTY, N.C. -
More than 500 children in Wake County are curently in foster care and under the care of Child Protective Services.
There are many reasons parents lose custody of their biological children; drug or alcohol addictions, domestic violence, child abandonment, and financial pressures are just a few examples.
"Whenever it's safe, we want childen with their own families," said Alma Shelton of Wake County Human Services. "We believe children are better off when they can live safely with their own families."
Shelton oversees the new PUSH program, Parents United To Stay Hopeful, a parent advocacy program to help parents whose children were recently placed in foster care successfully reunite with their loved ones.
"The main thing is we're trying to encourage parents in a very difficult situation to know they can be succesful in reunifying with their children," said Shelton.
Michelle Richardson abandoned her newborn in a Zebulon McDonalds on Dec. 7, 2006.
She spent 13 days in jail on child abuse charges and then with the help of her attorney and social worker spent nearly one year working to regain custody of the son she left behind.
In her first television interview since the incident , Richardson told NBC 17 News: "I felt helpless. There was nothing I could do. I felt like my heart had been ripped out of my chest because of a bad decision I had made. I couldn't change it, all I could do was move from that day forward to bring me to who I am now for myself and my kids."
She delined to comment further other than to characterize her bad decision by saying: "it was mentality."
Today she is a single mother of three children, including the baby she adandoned. Richardson is also helping other parents figure out the child welfare system.
She is a Parent Partner in the PUSH program and receives a part-time stipend for educating struggling parents about their rights, and helping them better deal with social workers, foster parents and other service providers.
"They may be in the system like I was, the first time in the system with no idea what to expect," explained Richardson. "So as a reunified birth parent we have the knowledge to pass on to other parents that we learned from our experience to help them reunify and be able to reunify quicker."
Richardson leads monthly parent orientation groups along with a Wake County Human Services employee at South Central Church of Christ in Raleigh.
"Our parent partners have credibility," said program manager Alma Shelton. "In other words, they've walked in the shoes of the parents who are new to us (Wake County Human Services)."
In just four months time, a dozen parents have successfully completed the 3-session Parent Orientation Group meetings. They receive a certificate to present to the judge in their case.
It's only one step toward reunification, ultimately parents must prove to Child Protective Services they can provide a safe and stable environment for thier biological children.
Shelton said of the program, "We believe it's a strategy to help parents who are in dire circumstances and struggling. Basically we believe in parents and I believe in families."
It took Parent Partner Maxcine Bland of Raleigh two-and-a-half years to regain custody of her three children after a long battle with drug addiction.
"I want parents to know you never have to walk alone. You never have to walk alone during this process," said Bland.
Both Bbland and Richardson got their second chance and now both women want to give other struggling parents hope they'll get their second chance too.
However, Shelton said the grant money for the PUSH program will run out by the end of this year.
They run the program on the cheap based on a stipend model. Parent Partners like Richardson recieve $12.50 per hour for their part-time work. Shelton is seeking financial support to hire a program coordinator.
Shelton estimates they may be able to help 50 additional parents in orientation groups and 200 people with training sessions before the funding runs out.
Watch our NBC 17 News special report in the video monitor above, as well as Parent Partners Michelle Richardson and Maxcine Bland in their own words.
http://wake.mync.com/site/wake/news/story/48409/program-gives-parents-hope-for-a-second-chance-to-raise-children
By Kim Genardo, NBC17, 4 days, 6 hours ago
Updated: Feb. 26 7:34 am
http://mync.com/site/48409/ WAKE COUNTY, N.C. -
More than 500 children in Wake County are curently in foster care and under the care of Child Protective Services.
There are many reasons parents lose custody of their biological children; drug or alcohol addictions, domestic violence, child abandonment, and financial pressures are just a few examples.
"Whenever it's safe, we want childen with their own families," said Alma Shelton of Wake County Human Services. "We believe children are better off when they can live safely with their own families."
Shelton oversees the new PUSH program, Parents United To Stay Hopeful, a parent advocacy program to help parents whose children were recently placed in foster care successfully reunite with their loved ones.
"The main thing is we're trying to encourage parents in a very difficult situation to know they can be succesful in reunifying with their children," said Shelton.
Michelle Richardson abandoned her newborn in a Zebulon McDonalds on Dec. 7, 2006.
She spent 13 days in jail on child abuse charges and then with the help of her attorney and social worker spent nearly one year working to regain custody of the son she left behind.
In her first television interview since the incident , Richardson told NBC 17 News: "I felt helpless. There was nothing I could do. I felt like my heart had been ripped out of my chest because of a bad decision I had made. I couldn't change it, all I could do was move from that day forward to bring me to who I am now for myself and my kids."
She delined to comment further other than to characterize her bad decision by saying: "it was mentality."
Today she is a single mother of three children, including the baby she adandoned. Richardson is also helping other parents figure out the child welfare system.
She is a Parent Partner in the PUSH program and receives a part-time stipend for educating struggling parents about their rights, and helping them better deal with social workers, foster parents and other service providers.
"They may be in the system like I was, the first time in the system with no idea what to expect," explained Richardson. "So as a reunified birth parent we have the knowledge to pass on to other parents that we learned from our experience to help them reunify and be able to reunify quicker."
Richardson leads monthly parent orientation groups along with a Wake County Human Services employee at South Central Church of Christ in Raleigh.
"Our parent partners have credibility," said program manager Alma Shelton. "In other words, they've walked in the shoes of the parents who are new to us (Wake County Human Services)."
In just four months time, a dozen parents have successfully completed the 3-session Parent Orientation Group meetings. They receive a certificate to present to the judge in their case.
It's only one step toward reunification, ultimately parents must prove to Child Protective Services they can provide a safe and stable environment for thier biological children.
Shelton said of the program, "We believe it's a strategy to help parents who are in dire circumstances and struggling. Basically we believe in parents and I believe in families."
It took Parent Partner Maxcine Bland of Raleigh two-and-a-half years to regain custody of her three children after a long battle with drug addiction.
"I want parents to know you never have to walk alone. You never have to walk alone during this process," said Bland.
Both Bbland and Richardson got their second chance and now both women want to give other struggling parents hope they'll get their second chance too.
However, Shelton said the grant money for the PUSH program will run out by the end of this year.
They run the program on the cheap based on a stipend model. Parent Partners like Richardson recieve $12.50 per hour for their part-time work. Shelton is seeking financial support to hire a program coordinator.
Shelton estimates they may be able to help 50 additional parents in orientation groups and 200 people with training sessions before the funding runs out.
Watch our NBC 17 News special report in the video monitor above, as well as Parent Partners Michelle Richardson and Maxcine Bland in their own words.
http://wake.mync.com/site/wake/news/story/48409/program-gives-parents-hope-for-a-second-chance-to-raise-children
Equal Justice Foundation
Please visit the Equal Justice Foundation web-site
Areas of Interest
Civilization
Courts & Civil Liberties
Families and Marriage
Domestic Violence
Prohibitions & War On Drugs
Vote Fraud & Election Issues
Domestic Violence Against Men in Colorado
Emerson story — 2nd Amendment
Have charges of domestic violence or abuse been made against you, or someone you know or love? Whether you are a man or woman dvmen.org will provide information essential to the survival of you and your children.
The Equal Justice Foundation is a nonprofit organization of citizens from all walks of life working to:
• Restore due process.
• Reverse the loss of our civil liberties.
• Ensure equality for all citizens before the bar.
• Establish judicial accountability.
• Reestablish the rule of law.
• Preserve the secret ballot.
• Ensure open, fair, and honest elections.
• Make the Bill of Rights a living document in our time.
Our viewpoints and findings are presented by an eclectic array of male and female authors from a wide variety of fields, backgrounds, and viewpoints.
Comments?
For additional information about the Equal Justice Foundation
Introduction
Find Help
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Get EJF newsletter
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Our objective is to fix the problem, not the blame.
Fundamental Liberties
Top
The Equal Justice Foundation believes:
• Citizens should not be torn from their homes and children in the middle of the night based on nothing more than hearsay.
• Men and women should not be presumed guilty until they can prove their innocence.
• A secret tribunal should not have the power to force a man from his home without notice or hearing.
• Police should not have the right to enter and search a citizen's home without a warrant.
• Citizens should not be imprisoned based only on hearsay.
• Citizens should not be more afraid of the police than they are of criminals.
• A legal system that tolerates perjury and the subornation of perjury can not produce justice.
• Men should not be censured by public officials for crimes they have not committed.
• Men and women should not be made to work as indentured servants or held in thrall to others for acts they have not committed.
These actions are occurring in America everyday. If you haven't yet personal experience with such sordid injustices we invite you to explore the following pages. Look at the evidence and laws behind these despicable acts. You will find numerous personal stories of men and women who have suffered under these draconian policies, often losing everything they loved and owned in the process. The persecution of Dr. Tim Emerson is but one contemptible example. See why so many find suicide their only escape. And join the Equal Justice Foundation in providing help and succor to many desperate men and women.
Basic Findings
Top
Make no mistake, we are engaged in an epic battle between two incompatible ideologies with fundamentally different views of the rights of the individual and the power of the state, with the future of civilization at stake.
In studying the problems of children, families, and marriage that are the bedrock of our society, some simple facts emerge from study after study:
• The safest place for a child is with their biological father.
• The safest place for a woman is in her home married to the biological father of her children.
• Men and women are equally violent in domestic relationships.
• "Any country that has tried to create a political solution to human problems has ended up with concentration camps and gulags." (Erin Pizzey)
Yet radical ideologues have successfully campaigned to pass laws that contravene these findings and act to destroy children, families, and marriages on a previously unimagined scale. No one of us can combat these evils, but standing together we can, and have made a difference.
These are not battles that will be won overnight and victory will never be complete. But we are turning the tide on repression and darkness. Please join us, for your sake, and the sake of your children.
Research Areas
Top
The essays, papers, articles, and illustrative vignettes of the research areas of interest to the Equal Justice Foundation are organized into six general areas:
• Civilization — the umbrella under which we currently exist but that is under attack.
• Families and Marriage — the basic building blocks of civilization that extremists want to destroy.
• Domestic Violence — family violence has become a tool in the hands of ideologues for the destruction of families and marriage. To provide balance the EJF also maintains and supports the Domestic Violence Against Men In Colorado web site. The Emerson story tells how the life of one medical doctor was destroyed by these draconian laws but we know of many more professionals whose careers have been destroyed by false allegations.
• Courts and Civil Liberties — the crusaders attempting to destroy families and marriage depend heavily on corrupt "family" courts and the destruction of civil liberties to achieve their objectives.
• Prohibitions and War On Drugs — tyrants have always depended on distractions to accomplish their goals and for the denial of civil liberties.
• Vote Fraud and Election Issues — the federally-funded stampede to computer voting and mail in elections has greatly enhanced the potential for election fraud and undermined the faith of citizen's in their elections. The EJJF has been at the forefront, documenting the problems of incompetent and dishonest election officials and voting machine vendors.
Federal Employees In Colorado, Idaho, Wyoming, and Utah
Top
In Colorado, Idaho, Wyoming, and Utah federal employees can contribute through the Combined Federal Campaign.
The Equal Justice Foundation agency number is 18855.
For additional information about the Equal Justice Foundation
Introduction
Find Help
Newsletters
Get EJF newsletter
Brochures
Bumper Stickers
Annual Reports
How You Can Help
Join the EJF
Contribute
Handouts
Our objective is to fix the problem, not the blame.
This Web site is maintained and supported by the
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Contributions are tax deductible.
All content Copyright © 2001-2008 by the Equal Justice Foundation unless otherwise noted.
All rights reserved. For additional information contact webmaster@ejfi.org
Note: We do not knowingly associate with facilities, organizations, or groups whom we are aware discriminate against men or women on the basis of race, religion, origin, or gender.
The good men may do separately is small compared with what they may do collectively.
Benjamin Franklin
Last modified 8/27/08
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Father's World
http://www.ejfi.org/
Areas of Interest
Civilization
Courts & Civil Liberties
Families and Marriage
Domestic Violence
Prohibitions & War On Drugs
Vote Fraud & Election Issues
Domestic Violence Against Men in Colorado
Emerson story — 2nd Amendment
Have charges of domestic violence or abuse been made against you, or someone you know or love? Whether you are a man or woman dvmen.org will provide information essential to the survival of you and your children.
The Equal Justice Foundation is a nonprofit organization of citizens from all walks of life working to:
• Restore due process.
• Reverse the loss of our civil liberties.
• Ensure equality for all citizens before the bar.
• Establish judicial accountability.
• Reestablish the rule of law.
• Preserve the secret ballot.
• Ensure open, fair, and honest elections.
• Make the Bill of Rights a living document in our time.
Our viewpoints and findings are presented by an eclectic array of male and female authors from a wide variety of fields, backgrounds, and viewpoints.
Comments?
For additional information about the Equal Justice Foundation
Introduction
Find Help
Newsletters
Get EJF newsletter
Brochures
Bumper Stickers
Annual Reports
How You Can Help
Join the EJF
Contribute
Handouts
Our objective is to fix the problem, not the blame.
Fundamental Liberties
Top
The Equal Justice Foundation believes:
• Citizens should not be torn from their homes and children in the middle of the night based on nothing more than hearsay.
• Men and women should not be presumed guilty until they can prove their innocence.
• A secret tribunal should not have the power to force a man from his home without notice or hearing.
• Police should not have the right to enter and search a citizen's home without a warrant.
• Citizens should not be imprisoned based only on hearsay.
• Citizens should not be more afraid of the police than they are of criminals.
• A legal system that tolerates perjury and the subornation of perjury can not produce justice.
• Men should not be censured by public officials for crimes they have not committed.
• Men and women should not be made to work as indentured servants or held in thrall to others for acts they have not committed.
These actions are occurring in America everyday. If you haven't yet personal experience with such sordid injustices we invite you to explore the following pages. Look at the evidence and laws behind these despicable acts. You will find numerous personal stories of men and women who have suffered under these draconian policies, often losing everything they loved and owned in the process. The persecution of Dr. Tim Emerson is but one contemptible example. See why so many find suicide their only escape. And join the Equal Justice Foundation in providing help and succor to many desperate men and women.
Basic Findings
Top
Make no mistake, we are engaged in an epic battle between two incompatible ideologies with fundamentally different views of the rights of the individual and the power of the state, with the future of civilization at stake.
In studying the problems of children, families, and marriage that are the bedrock of our society, some simple facts emerge from study after study:
• The safest place for a child is with their biological father.
• The safest place for a woman is in her home married to the biological father of her children.
• Men and women are equally violent in domestic relationships.
• "Any country that has tried to create a political solution to human problems has ended up with concentration camps and gulags." (Erin Pizzey)
Yet radical ideologues have successfully campaigned to pass laws that contravene these findings and act to destroy children, families, and marriages on a previously unimagined scale. No one of us can combat these evils, but standing together we can, and have made a difference.
These are not battles that will be won overnight and victory will never be complete. But we are turning the tide on repression and darkness. Please join us, for your sake, and the sake of your children.
Research Areas
Top
The essays, papers, articles, and illustrative vignettes of the research areas of interest to the Equal Justice Foundation are organized into six general areas:
• Civilization — the umbrella under which we currently exist but that is under attack.
• Families and Marriage — the basic building blocks of civilization that extremists want to destroy.
• Domestic Violence — family violence has become a tool in the hands of ideologues for the destruction of families and marriage. To provide balance the EJF also maintains and supports the Domestic Violence Against Men In Colorado web site. The Emerson story tells how the life of one medical doctor was destroyed by these draconian laws but we know of many more professionals whose careers have been destroyed by false allegations.
• Courts and Civil Liberties — the crusaders attempting to destroy families and marriage depend heavily on corrupt "family" courts and the destruction of civil liberties to achieve their objectives.
• Prohibitions and War On Drugs — tyrants have always depended on distractions to accomplish their goals and for the denial of civil liberties.
• Vote Fraud and Election Issues — the federally-funded stampede to computer voting and mail in elections has greatly enhanced the potential for election fraud and undermined the faith of citizen's in their elections. The EJJF has been at the forefront, documenting the problems of incompetent and dishonest election officials and voting machine vendors.
Federal Employees In Colorado, Idaho, Wyoming, and Utah
Top
In Colorado, Idaho, Wyoming, and Utah federal employees can contribute through the Combined Federal Campaign.
The Equal Justice Foundation agency number is 18855.
For additional information about the Equal Justice Foundation
Introduction
Find Help
Newsletters
Get EJF newsletter
Brochures
Bumper Stickers
Annual Reports
How You Can Help
Join the EJF
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The good men may do separately is small compared with what they may do collectively.
Benjamin Franklin
Last modified 8/27/08
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